The present invention pertains to the detection of commonality between various systems and more particularly to, a content independent method of determining commonly shared attributes among these systems.
For systems to communicate among one another, it must determined what attributes these systems have in common. Attributes are parameters which describe the capabilities and operabilities of each system. The process of determining which attributes two or more systems have in common is referred to as options negotiations.
Attributes are generally hierarchical in nature. For example, access control attributes may include such items as the type of system present, the security level of the system (e.g. top secret, secret, confidential or unclassified) certification level and accrediting authorities (e.g. DOD, NSA, etc.). Before determining the security level (second level attribute) of another system with which this system is communicating, the system first determines what system type (first level attribute) the other system is. Then, the security level is determined.
Typically, the interrelationships of the attributes and the rules for determining which attributes are shared are fixed for a particular implementation. This provides inflexible options negotiations hardware or software. Such options negotiations methods are termed content dependent since the method must change, if any of the attributes or their interrelationship is changed.
According, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for options negotiations which is independent of the attributes and their interrelationship and to allow changes to the attributes or their interrelationships without changing the options negotiations method itself.